back blogs

Hello Ladies and germs. Finally found some time to look at the old website, decided to update my blog at least. Here are some of the fruits o’ my efforts.

July 11, 2005

Bulletin from Amsterdammed

Hello, my little chickadees. Miss me? I know it has been many moons since I have generated a wee missive like this, but hey, who counts such things among dear compas and friends such as we?

As is pretty normal these days, I am traveling around with tuxedomoon. This last session of my life as a singing baggage handler has taken me first to Amsterdam, then naples, then mestre, near Venice and now back to Amsterdam.

We are the guests of this sort of dada surrealist community group called the Illuseum. They are sponsoring a festival of events and exhibitions called "New Atlantis" to which we have been invited. We are conducting workshops and performing hither and yon.

I have been riding an old (circa 1920) bicycle around. this place is bike heaven. As you know, there are bike paths, roads really, everywhere with their own set of traffic lights and street markings and all. There is real bicycle traffic here; you have to be on guard just like driving a car. There are hundreds of thousands of bicycles on the road every day. Wow.

Today was old Blaine's 52nd birthday. Way hey. Happy birthday to me. I'm not getting older, I'm getting…..um…well, I AM getting older. I frantically do yoga and ride a bicycle but nothing will persuade that old grim reaper to turn back the clock. Who gives a shit, finally? You don't scare me, ese! As james whale sings in "gods and monsters" "Grave where is thy victory? Death, where is thy sting a ling a ling?" hah.

Pretty good birthday. we played for this public dinner on a footbridge over a canal. there were lots of people from the local community eating on the bridge. we played as the sun set. Pretty good.

Will go back to Athens in about a week.

In the meantime, I remain ever yours, faithful unto the end, like an old dog sleeping at your feet by the fire, humping your leg until you hit me with a newspaper, I crap on the carpet and you must put me down at last.

Yours for all time

Blaine leslie reininger
Born July 10 1953 at 3 am in Pueblo, Colorado, U.S.A.

April 7, 2005

Back from Bushland

Hello my little chickadees. Here's Blaine, back in Athens after our glorious return to Homeland America, Estados Unidos. If you ain't aware already, Tuxedomoon went to San Francisco for the entire month of March, 2005. While
there we jammed furiously with an eye upon a new cd. This work will continue later, fiends.We played two shows in San Fran, one in Mexico City and one in Lost Angeles.

At that point, we upped stakes and flew to New York where we wowed 'em at the Knitting Factory and the Tribeca Grand Hotel. Of course, when we tell people that we played in the lobby of an enormous and luxe hotel where formerlyonly derelicts tread, they may think we have joined the Holiday Inn and cruise ship circuit. None of that.

Now, back in greece, the impressions fostered by this return are too many to process. In any case, we have a bunch more shows in Spain and Portugal. We even have one in Italy. Then we are finished, 14 April.

Suffice to say, I grew weary of the 8th grade principle's office atmosphere of the current United States. Shuffling yet again through the checkpoints set up by the Sicherheitsamt of the Office of Homeland Security
(Heimatssicherheitamt), it struck me that we would all be better off if we dressed and acted as they treat us. As mental patients. Think about it, a bathrobe and slippers would be themost security-friendly uniform, no fumbling with shoes and belts andjackets, everything to hand for those anal probes for contraband. Also, had we all spent time in jail or the nuthouse, we would be handier with the plastic cutlery enforced throughout the secure zones of our airports. Who can deny that a little Thorazine would render the whole experience of air travel in modern America
just that little bit less stressful? I already noted that a way to smoke a cigarette undetected by closed circuit television taught to me by a former mental patient has proven most effective.

And don't get me started on smoking in New Bushland. Standing outside any given cafe, restaurant, home in America, puffing away with the other lost souls in the cold and the rain, handing out cigs to the many homeless desperadoes who shuffled past, I began to long for Greece, where one does not feel as if there were a school nurse always in his pocket, keeping him in line. In fact, in Greece, smoking is compulsory for men over 6 years old. Failure to smoke in a public place is punishable by a fine.

There you go, amici, a short bulletin on a Sunday afternoon. Hope you enjoyed it.

I lavish love upon all of your unlined and youthful brows.

your working boy

Blaine

Crucifix Acupuncture.

an ode to Albrecht Hirche

I’m standing there in berlin, dressed in black

That ennio morricone music playing,

TWANG! I raise my black stetson,

Lights come up, music swells,

I swagger down off the stage to meet my enemy.

I am super baaaad.

Baddest thang on two continents.

I am in hog heaven, grandma.

One of the best moments in my damn life, yer honor.

Then, I am sitting under the seats in a mattress-striped rolling stones suit

Not smoking. Rauchen verboten. Should be smoking. Virtually smoking, then.

Next, I am riding a no-speed bicycle with flat tires around and around and around

Praying “dear god, don’t let me fall off this thing”.

I dismount and whip out my blazing git-tar

Whoooo! Get back Loretta, I am Johnny B. Goode his own self,

I plays “Lucille”

Whoo! Y’all kin fry a egg on my “Lucille”.

Hot rats, bwana! Bop ‘til youse drop!

Before I know it, I am lying in a coffin with a radio clutched over my crotch.

I hear Mozart’s requiem

I practice being so triumphantly dead. Dead in a Mozart manner.

I see my own state funeral and all the earnest mourning over my illustrious passing.

“He was a simple man….a brilliant man…great, in a word”

Boo hoo hoo, so elegantly sad like a black rose in a dog’s mouth.

Or something.

Long black nylon hairs from the lead actor’s wig fly up my nose.

(left there from his previous occupancy, I suppose)

My hands are pinned to my sides. I cannot scratch my itch.

I try to enter an itch-free universe by chanting mantras.

It is not working.

All of these mystic moments brought to you by Albrecht Hirche.

All of these and more.

Come to give me stories to tell when I thought they was all told, officer.

Lay apostle of the first and last church of rock n’ roll.

Brother in arms.

Whoa!

Atom eye bitch tits.

Lunch poet.

Genius cartwheel

Crucifix acupuncture

Shanti, shanti, shanti.

Blaine L. Reininger

Athens, Greece

2005